


Flow

by monimala



Category: Nashville (TV)
Genre: F/M, Future Fic, POV Female Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-23
Updated: 2013-04-23
Packaged: 2017-12-09 08:03:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,429
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/771925
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/monimala/pseuds/monimala
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Goes AU after mid-season one and will probably be swiftly Jossed! <i>It’s not till he’s gone a year that she really feels the loss.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	Flow

She misses him every day, but it’s not till he’s gone a year that she really feels the loss. She wakes up one morning — another city, another hotel room, another early press junket — and reaches out blindly for her cell phone. She scrolls halfway through her contacts before she remembers he won’t pick up.

He’ll never pick up again.

She bursts into ugly tears, like an old, hit song, and stays under the covers until Emily comes in to drag her out and get her moving. “I don’t remember what he kisses like,” she confesses, any pretense of youthful cool drowned in raccoon eyes and hidden under bed head. “How can I not remember?”

Her assistant spins her toward the shower, knowing better than to count off all the men who helped her erase the taste. “You’re sitting down with Katie Couric at 8:30 sharp. Put your face on,” she says, instead.

Juliette’s face is always on. It and her voice are the only things that have never let her down, never left her behind. _He_ left her. Intentionally. Willfully. Permanently. “ _I’m dead to you, Juliette. You hear me? Dead. Don’t call. Don’t write. Don’t text. Don’t even say my name.”_

It’s the kind of dead she can’t even grieve properly, because he’s still alive for everyone else. _“The next time you come between me and mine, I will not be responsible for what I do. Now get out.”_

As if she wasn’t his, too.

As if she, not his precious Rayna, committed the real sin.

Sometimes, when she’s feeling really masochistic, she’ll look for the photos, for the YouTube videos and the TMZ sound bytes. _Deacon Claybourne, daughter Maddie and Rayna James out for a stroll. Deacon and Rayna take Maddie to the Opry with half-sister Daphne Conrad._ And always the Bluebird, where she can no longer set foot.

It was the first place she said she loved him — laughing in front of a crowd of well wishers — and she figures, at 8:32 on a fancy couch across from fancy Katie Couric, that maybe this will be the last one.

Because Katie asks, of course. All fake, bless-your-heart, TV host concern. “It’s been a year since your very public falling out with guitarist Deacon Claybourne. Have you come to terms with it?”

Juliette knows what Katie wants, what the audience out there in America wants. Anger. Drama. Fireworks. The shoplifting diva blowing her cool. But she hasn’t been that girl in a long, long time. So she leans forward, her voice quavering like Barbara Walters is running this show instead of enjoying her retirement.

“You ever lost your very best friend, Katie? It’s like having your heart ripped out little by little every day.” Maybe it’s rehearsed, maybe it’s sincere. None of them will ever know. “So have I ‘come to terms’ with it? No.” She talks right at the camera then, hands knotting in her lap, the tears from her wet wakeup still swimming in her eyes. “The day I put me and Deacon to bed is the day I’ve lost my whole heart…the very thing that makes my music what it is. I can’t afford that. And I can’t afford to ever say goodbye to Deacon Claybourne, even if he’s said it to me.”

It’s the one bit of the interview that gets replayed everywhere. Anything she says next, about her new album and her tour, is a throwaway line, a subhead, and an afterthought. Over the next three days, from Columbus to Indianapolis to Lexington, her own voice chases the band and the crew across the road, on every Sirius radio station that plays country or pop. _It’s like having your heart ripped out…the day I put me and Deacon to bed…I can’t afford to ever say goodbye to Deacon_.

If she has to feel the loss, to understand it and process it, then she hopes it gets all the way back to him in Nashville. She hopes it catches up to his happy little family and runs him down. _I loved you, and you left me. You son of a bitch._

He may be dead to her, but she is the ghost. Floating through a grown up’s contemporary country career, every dream fulfilled except for the one where she has people to share it with.

Because she told the truth. That’s the beauty of it. Growing up with an addict who spit out a lie for every line snorted and every shot downed, all Juliette ever knew was how to bullshit a bullshitter. And just when she comes into her own, gets right with herself and tells the person she cares about more than anyone else in the world a piece of the God’s honest truth, it ruins everything.

_“Maddie Conrad is your daughter, Deacon. How do you not see it? How could you not know? How could she not tell you?”_

_“Get out.”_

Lexington is sold out. The arena is packed to the rafters. And every single one of the fans is screaming her name. She misses being able to look over her shoulder and catch his eye — rueful, more than a bit of warning to ‘behave’ — and has to settle for Avery’s gentle smile. They’ve written a few songs together, and he does all right on his own when he’s not on tour with her, but Avery will never fill Deacon’s shoes. He’ll never be her mentor, her best friend and her lover rolled up into one beautifully broody package. She wouldn’t want him to be, because it’s a thankless position. A heartbreaking one. And one that means he’ll walk out, too.

They play a solid hour-and-a-half show with one break in the middle, give the kids their money’s worth, and her encore is two songs. It’s a full house, and she should make them party songs, get everybody up on their feet and ready to dance on out the door. But she pulls out a stool, sits for a spell, and gives them “For Your Glory” and “We Are Water” instead. One for the Lord, and one for him. Juliette’s always put 99 percent of her faith in the latter, not the former, anyhow.

Her voice is raw. She is raw. Like maybe she never stopped crying black mascara tears after that morning in Ohio. The words come out shaky at first, and then a little smoky. Like she’s been chaining Marlboros before shows for the last six months. But they are water. They flow and flow. She feels him pouring through every inch of her soul.

_“This was not any of your business, Juliette.”_

_“How can you say that? You have been my business since the day I met you. And I have been yours. You know everything about me, good and bad. How is it fair for Rayna to hide something so big from you and get away with it? I’m just trying to help.”_

_“Well, quit.”_

_“I won’t quit on you, Deacon. Not until the day you die.”_

_“Then I’m dead to you, Juliette. You hear me? Dead.”_

She sits on the stool long after the music’s faded. The stage lights are off and the house lights are up, with the arena emptying as quick as it filled. And she still doesn’t remember what he kissed like. If it was fast or slow. If he held her face. If he laughed. If he tasted like Nicorette or peppermint.

Emily’s not there to point her in the right direction, so she just stays where she is. Eventually, someone will come out and get her. Probably relieved she’s not banging somebody on her bus or starting a ruckus in the makeup room.

Sure enough, after 10 minutes go by, she hears the footsteps. Soft but purposeful. Not Em, who clicks around in stilettos just like she does. Probably Avery. Frequently sent out on missions of the “collect Juliette” variety. He used to have a temper, too, they tell her. But he’s taken his knocks and his kicks and come out gentle and humble on the other side.

Her feet slip down from the rungs of the stool to touch the floor, and she turns…and then stops. 

It’s not Avery.

Damn it, and thank God, it’s not Avery.

He looks taller. Older. There are more laugh lines around his eyes and at the corners of his mouth. The close-trimmed beard still hugs his jaw. He still looks at her like he can see right through her. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

She laughs because she doesn’t know what else to do. Short of melting to the floor in a boneless, nerveless heap. “We’re back on that, are we?” She hopes the tremor from the Katie interview doesn’t dare make a repeat appearance. “I thought the problem was that I _did_ tell you.”

He smiles back, the lines around his mouth cutting in deeper as he rubs the back of his neck and shifts from foot to foot. His boots are so old they’re ready to fall off. “No, darlin’,” he chuckles. “I mean, why didn’t you tell me you love me?”

She’s dreamed about him standing in front of her more times than she can count. Looking just this handsome, saying just these things. The reality of it destroys her in a whole new way. “What does it matter? Who cares if I said it once or I said it never or I said it a thousand times? You _leave_ ,” she reminds him. “You _all leave_. Did Rayna really let you out of the gilded cage just so you could come all the way here and ask me that?”

He huffs in exasperation. He was _always_ exasperated at her for one thing or another. “I’m not _with_ Rayna. Not like that.”

Like what? Like soul mates? Like teenage sweethearts who never got the fuck over their Taylor Swift song love story? Her stomach lurches and she struggles not to heave. “Jesus Christ. Alert the media. Tell TMZ. Tell someone who _cares_.” She slides off the stool, stumbling toward the edge of the stage. “Just go away. Leave me alone.”

He follows her. Those slow, methodical boot steps crunching over her weary bones. “I thought you couldn’t afford to say goodbye to me?”

“‘Go away’ isn’t goodbye. It’s me trying to move on with my life.” She tosses her hair, Juliette Barnes in diva mode, before looking out at the empty pit, bracketed by metal barriers that hold back nothing at all.

Deacon’s hand settles on her shoulder, light as a feather but hot as a branding iron. “After telling the whole country that a little bit of your heart gets ripped away every day? That’s your idea of moving on?”

Yes. It has to be. She’s got no other choice. “What did you want me to say?” she demands. “That you mean nothing to me? That I don’t care what you do with your life? That our falling out is just a footnote in my musical history? I can’t. Maybe you like it when women jerk you around for years on end and hide things from you, but I can’t play it like that. I miss you. And maybe…maybe someday soon there will be a day when I won’t.” She breathes in deep, like she can breathe in strength, too. “I cannot wait for that day.”

“Juliette…” Why he’s never recorded solo, she’ll never understand. Because his voice is like a sweet julep, muddling all the vowels in her name like mint leaves in sugar.

“You’re dead to me, remember?” She shuts her eyes tight, like that can stop the tears. The quaver. The shaking that is in no way an act for cameras. “No calls. No texts. No names.”

“Juliette.” He’s right in her ear. A song she can’t get out of her head.

“Don’t say my name.” One more time, and she’ll jump.

“Juliette, Juliette, Juliette.” He pulls her back from the edge. Like he always used to. Only this time, he keeps his arms wrapped around her, settles his chin on her shoulder and whispers against her cheek. “Juliette, I’m sorry. I’m so damn sorry.”

He smells like leather and cheap soap and sharp aftershave. She forgot that, too. “Just what the hell are you sorry for, Deacon? You shut me out for a _year_.”

“My daughter’s your biggest fan. I couldn’t shut you out if I tried.” There are a hundred arguments she could make to the contrary, but hearing him say ‘daughter’ in that soft, reverent way is enough to keep her quiet. To twist her in his arms so she can look up at the wonder in his calm, steady eyes. “Maddie made me teach her every song we played together,” he tells her with that old, familiar half-smile. “She and Daphne asked about you all the time. They have posters, Juliette. CDs. Mp3s. They watch your videos and set in front of the TV to watch all your specials and interviews. It ripped my heart out a little bit every single day of that goddamn year.”

It doesn’t make any sense. No matter which way she tilts it. Deacon abandoned her for Rayna and her family. Why would he teach Maddie her songs? Why would he let them say her name when she was supposed to forget she ever knew his? “What are you saying?”

He cups her face in his palms, like she’s something precious not something he threw away. “I’m saying…I lost my best friend, too. And it’s my own damn fault. I get it now. You were just trying to give Maddie when you didn’t have.”

God, Deacon. _This_ is what she fell in love with two years ago. This gentle, loving, crazy bear of a man. And, try as she might, she can’t stop herself from leaning in. “No,” she whispers. “I was trying to give her what I _did_ have. You.”

“Darlin’.” He makes that sexy sound low in his throat that always gets her revved…that she thought she’d never hear again. “Juliette, what am I gonna do with you?”

_I don’t know, but just don’t walk away. Don’t break my heart again. Don’t go back to her._ She says none of that out loud. She just suggests, “Kiss me hello?”

And then she doesn’t have to dig for the memory anymore, to struggle and suffer and rack her brain. Because she knows it in the here and now. Deacon Claybourne kisses her like he’s home.

 

 --end—

 

April 23, 2013

 

 

 


End file.
